January 24, 2007
Information Design Watch
From Dynamic Diagrams
Design for Understanding
In This Issue:
DESIGN
- The Secret Weapon of Product Designers
- Inventing Kindergarten
- Paper Cuts and System Interfaces
WEB INTERFACE DESIGN
- Wide Right
DYNAMIC DIAGRAMS NEWS
- Information Design Consultant Needed
DESIGN
The Secret Weapon of Product Designers
Posted by Lisa Agustin
This month's issue of Fast Company offers a peek into the DesignAid kit, a collection of twenty inventions with "unexpected properties," such as impact-absorbing silicon (useful for building a sturdier car bumper) or sound-recording paper (consider a talking postcard). Created by Inventables, the kit changes quarterly and offers product designers a peek at some unusual technologies along with suggestions for various applications. Kit recipients can decide whether any of the offerings might be somehow integrated into their own products, or just use the kit as a source of inspiration for innovative thinking.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/111/open_inspiration-kit.html
Inventing Kindergarten
Posted by Lisa Agustin
As a parent researching kindergarten options, most of the prospective schools offer what you'd expect, a combination of play activities and exploration of some "real school" (e.g., reading, writing, and math). So it was with some personal interest that I visited the Institute for Figuring's "Inventing Kindergarten," a look at the original incarnation of kindergarten, as developed by German scientist Friedrich Froebel in the early 19th century. The exhibition outlines the underlying principles of Froebel's approach, which was "based around a system of abstract exercises that aimed to instill in young children an understanding of the mathematically generated logic underlying the ebb and flow of creation." Along with physical activities such as singing, dancing, and gardening, Froebel developed a series of mental exercises that revolved around twenty "occupational gifts," or what might be considered educational toys today. Cutting and folding paper, weaving sticks, and sewing thread into cards were intended to teach the creation of forms in the real world. Instructional tools for Froebel's kindergarten included various pattern books, which are remarkable not only for their intricacy and beauty, but also as they are clearly recognizable as predecessors to design systems we take for granted in today's digital world.
http://www.theiff.org/oexhibits/kindy01.html
Paper Cuts and System Interfaces
Posted by Chris Jackson
Visual and performance artist Peter Calleson explores multiple layers of meaning in his papercut works to explore the complexities between 2D and 3D presentation. I'm drawn to the beauty and cleverness of the works, but I'm most intrigued by how these works exist between two opposites or, as Callesen puts it, between "image and reality."
I can't look at Callesen's papercut works and not think about the intersection between systems and interfaces, how what's beneath the surface influences what's above (and vice versa). If you look at one side only, you miss the complexity of the whole. And that's one of the great challenges in system design.
http://www.oncotton.co.uk/peter/index/index2.html
WEB INTERFACE DESIGN
Wide Right
Posted by Henry Woodbury
In the web coding world, "liquid" layout refers to the technique of setting column widths on a web page as percentages. This allows the interface to expand to fit the size of a user's browser. Dynamic Diagrams' Information Design Watch blog uses liquid layout.
The goal is to use all of the window real-estate possible for content while letting users retain control over presentation width. The problem with this goal is two-fold: First, users don't necessarily want to resize their browsers as they link from one site to another. Second, with the increasing use of PDAs and wide-screen monitors, a liquid layout may be shrunk or expanded far out of the 800 to 1200 pixel range common to PC video-card configurations.
In an A List Apart article, Marc Van Den Dobbelsteen proposes an alternate solution: different style sheets for differently-sized screens. A simple JavaScript function detects the browser's window width and loads a style sheet that resets the content layout appropriately. For example, a suite of three style sheets could be designed to handle very small windows (400px or less), a broad middle range (400 to 1024px), and very wide windows (1024 or greater).
This makes a lot of sense for Web sites known to have a PDA (or wide-screen) user base. However, like other stylesheet-switching techniques, implementation is the easy part. The challenges come before and after implementation — before, in increased design costs; and after, in the long-term maintenance of multiple stylesheets
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/switchymclayout
DYNAMIC DIAGRAMS NEWS
Information Design Consultant Needed
Join the Dynamic Diagrams team and help create new ways to visualize complex information! We have a full-time, permanent position open for an information design professional with proven experience in information design, marketing strategy, and communications. For details, see our Careers page:
http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/about/careers.html
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